Paperless Office: These steps will get you in the right direction

Paper and pen can be useful in many cases - jotting down a few thoughts, making a transcript of the phone or leaving a message for a colleague. You will probably find one or more sticky notes on almost every computer screen in German offices - in this country we are still pretty much analogue, and that makes a lot of things confusing. In this article, we'll take a look at how to go paperless in your office step-by-step!

"Getting bogged down": Disadvantages of paper in the office

Like everything, the paperless office has its pros and cons. Paper has proven its worth as a means of communication over the last few centuries and is it now to be replaced by new technology? – that makes older people in particular quickly suspicious. So let's first look at the specific disadvantages of paper and why a digital solution can make more sense.

Paper and small notes are always stationary and probably not available when you are spontaneously in another building or in your home office. So that you always have every little note with you, an immense organizational effort would be necessary, which is hardly realistic in everyday life. You are in the home office and have to look for a specific invoice in a folder at your company - a colleague has to be called to do this task for you - the first reason for the paperless office.

In a paperless or digital office, all notes, documents and idea boards are organized in a central document management system. All employees of the company have access to this, or to the corresponding sub-areas. You now make all the notes on a tablet or notebook and upload them to the appropriate folder - even if it's just a small sticky note for the colleague that you can then assign to them. You can then easily access documents from other departments of the company, such as accounting, from anywhere, since they are stored online - the paper-free office makes a lot of annoying back and forth easier here.

The larger the company is, the more the paperless office is an option. Because in a large company, there are tons of documents of all kinds buzzing around every day that have to be sorted and filed. It can quickly happen that an important letter from the tax office or other documents disappear in the depths of a file folder - where you then have to spend an hour of your actual working time to look for them again.

In a paperless office, you can easily search for all types of documents - whether by word, date or type of writing. If everything has been properly saved and recorded, you can find every letter in a flash when it matters most. Thus, the paper-free office not only protects your nerves, but also saves you from overtime through endless searches.

Of course, a paper-free office is also GoBD-compliant. The legislator even provides that the documents can be destroyed after proper digitization. This saves you a lot of storage space and makes it easier for the authorities to check your operations if necessary or to present certain documents. Paper originals only have to be kept in “raw form” in very few exceptional cases.

The demands on a modern office have increased enormously in the last ten years. This also includes the gradual, ever-increasing conversion to paper-free offices, even if this involves some effort. But other aspects also represent a modern and sustainable company, such as ergonomic and adjustable office furniture from desqup.

The height-adjustable desk is standard in a modern office today . Find out more about this on our product page or in one of our numerous desqup guides!

Step by step to the paper-free office

Switching to a paperless office isn't going to happen overnight. A few basics have to be created so that the operation can really work without files and the like. So in this section of the text, we look at the things you should prepare and consider as you transition to a paperless office .

You should store all your documents in a cloud. Large corporations sometimes develop their own in-house systems for this, but cloud services from well-known providers also offer sufficient security. You need a cloud so that you can really access your data anytime and anywhere. In general, however, it has to be said that no cloud system is 100 percent secure against hacker attacks - but with large providers such as Dropbox or Google Drive you are still comparatively well protected.

Tip: Use different test versions of the providers in advance. This way you can find out which cloud you get along with best and which system you can trust. 

As a next step, we recommend a very thorough inventory of all documents in the company. It must not happen that a letter or an invoice has not yet been recorded - this applies to both incoming and outgoing documents. Internal company notes must also be digitized and possibly assigned to the appropriate employees so that the paper-free office can function and problems do not arise.

A checklist and a stamp for digitized documents can help here so that you can keep a precise overview. 

Consistency is extremely important in the paperless office. In the beginning you may have problems getting used to the digital processes and would rather print out and file invoices - but you have to get away from that. If you want to edit a document, you must now save it as a PDF and edit it with a program that recognizes full text. Thanks to this, you can find the document again quickly and there is no need to search through files.

If you want to switch to a paperless office, then you absolutely need a high-quality and up-to-date document scanner. Not every letter or invoice comes to you by letter, and with it, digitizing only takes a few seconds. You can then immediately insert the document into the correct program and assign it to the appropriate category. Some document scanners even work with programs that have full text recognition - they are therefore named automatically.

These were the most important steps towards a sustainable, paper-free office. Thanks to the step-by-step digitization, you don't have any stress and everyday office life becomes a little easier every day. Annoying searches are no longer necessary, communication is easier and an overview is also created more quickly - on the whole, the paper-free office is the right way for most companies !

Would you like to learn more about how to set up a modern and sustainable office? Then take a look at the desqup guides . In addition to articles about health at work, you will also find many furnishing tips here!